Chainfire: Chainfire Trilogy Part 1

Chapter 42

Richard caught Shota’s arm, stopping her before she could leave. He couldn’t allow it to end in this way—for more than one reason.

“Shota, I’m sorry—But you said it yourself; it’s my life to live. If you consider me—even a little—to be a friend, someone you really do care about, then you would want me to live my life as I think I must, not as you might wish I could.”

Her chest heaved. “Fine. You have made your choice, Richard. Leave. Go and live what is left of your life.”

“I came to you because I need your help.”

She turned around fully toward him and cast him as forbidding a look as he had ever seen on anyone. It was the unmistakable mask of a witch woman. He could almost see the air around her sizzling.

“I have given you help—gained through an effort on my part that I seriously doubt you can begin to imagine. Use that help as you wish. Now, leave my home.”

As much as he wanted right then to do as she asked, as much as he wanted not to press her, he had come for a reason and she had not yet addressed it. He wasn’t leaving until she did.

“I need your help to find Kahlan.”

Her look turned even colder. “If you are wise, you will use the knowledge I have given you to stay alive as long as you can to help to defeat Jagang, or to go chasing after phantoms—I don’t care which anymore. Just go, before you find out why wizards fear to come into my home.”

“You said that your ability helps you see events in the flow of time. What does your ability see about me in the future?”

Shota was silent for a moment before she finally glanced away from his steady gaze. “For some reason, the river of time has become obscured to me. It happens.” Her gaze returned, more determined than ever. “You see? I can be of no further help. Now, go.”

He was determined not to allow her to dodge the issue. “You know that I came here for information, for something that could help me find out the truth about what’s going on. This is important. It’s important to more people than just you or me. Don’t close yourself off from me like this. Shota, please. I need your help.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Since when have you ever followed anything I’ve ever told you?”

“Look, I admit that in the past I haven’t always agreed with everything you’ve had to say, but I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think you were an astute woman. While some of the things you’ve told me in the past were true, if I would have done things strictly your way without using my own judgment as the situation developed I would have failed and we would all be either under the rule of Darken Rahl or in the merciless embrace of the Keeper of the underworld.”

“So you say.”

Richard lost his indulgent tone as he leaned toward her. “You do remember the time you came to see me at the Mud People’s village, don’t you? The time you begged me to close the veil so that the Keeper wouldn’t have us all? You do remember telling me how much the Keeper wanted those with the gift, wanted you, a witch woman, to suffer unimaginably for all eternity?”

He jabbed her with a finger, punctuating his points. “You did not suffer all the frightful things necessary to stop what was happening—I did. You did not have to fight the Keeper’s terrors to close the veil—I did. You did not save your own hide from the Keeper—I did.”

She was watching him from under her lowered brow. “I remember.”

“I succeeded. I saved you from that fate.”

“You saved yourself from that fate. That it saved me as well was not your purpose, merely a side consequence.”

He let out a breath, trying to be patient. “Shota, I know that you must know something about this—something about what’s happened to Kahlan.”

“I told you, I don’t remember any woman named Kahlan.”

“Yes, and the reason is that something is terribly wrong and I realize that because of that you don’t recall her, but you must know something that will help me in my search for the truth—some bit of information that will help me find out the truth about what’s really going on.”

“And you expect that you can just walk uninvited into my home, put my life at risk, do your little dance, and get whatever part of my life, my ability, that you want for yourself.”

Richard stared at her. She had not denied that she knew something that might help him. He realized that he had indeed been right about her.

“Shota, stop posturing and stop acting like I’m unfairly making demands of you. I’ve never lied to you and you know it. I’m telling you that this is important to you, too, whether or not you yet realize it. For all I know, it could yet be something the Keeper has initiated in order to get us all. I need whatever information you can give me to prevent the success of whatever it is that’s going wrong. I’m not playing games. I will have what you know!”

“And you think that such a demand entitles you to it?” Her eyes narrowed. “You think that just because I have something, your perceived need means that I must surrender whatever I have? That you are entitled to any part of my life you feel you need? You think that my life is not mine, but I am merely meant to serve you? You think my life means nothing but to be at your disposal when you deign to have use of me? You think you can come in here and make demands, but when I dare ask for something, you get indignant?”

“I wasn’t indignant,” he said, trying to restrain his tone. “I appreciated the sincerity of your offer. I understand very well the empty feeling of being alone. But if you’re the woman I believe you are, you wouldn’t want me even though my heart wasn’t in it. You deserve to have someone who can love you. I’m sorry, Shota, but I can’t lie and tell you that I can be that one for you or I would only in the end be hurting you worse. I can’t lie to you; I’m already in love with someone.

“And even if you already realized that, would you really want someone who was so casually unfaithful as to just take up such an offer on the spot? I think what you really want is your equal, a true partner in your life, someone with whom to share the wonders of life. I don’t think you really want the empty reward of a lapdog. I think you already know that a lapdog can bring you no real joy.

“If you care about me, if you made such an offer because you really care, if you were sincere, then help me.”

She didn’t look like she intended to answer, so he pressed on. “Shota, I need to know any information you can give me. It’s important. As important as it was to you when you came to ask me to seal the breach in the veil. I don’t know enough to solve this problem. If I fail, I fear we all will lose. I don’t have time for games. I need the information you have.”

“How dare you make such an arrogant demand of me. I’ve already told you, already given you my answer. It’s my ability, my life. You have no right to it.”

Richard pressed his thumb and middle finger to opposite temples as he took a calming breath. He grudgingly realized that maybe she had a point.

He turned his back to her and walked off a few paces as he considered what he might do. One thing he knew for certain, he wasn’t leaving without every bit of help available.

“You’re saying, then, that you know something that would help me in my search for the truth.”

“I know a lot of things about a lot of different areas of the truth.”

“But you know something that I need in order to find the truth about what brought me here to see you.”

“Yes.”

He knew it. With his back still to her, he said, “Name your price.”

“You would not be willing to pay the price.”

He considered the price he expected her to revisit.

Richard turned to her. She was watching him in that way that made him feel transparent. He was not leaving without the information and that was all there was to it. This was Kahlan’s life.

Whatever he had to do to save her life, including giving up his, he would do.

“Name your price.”

“The Sword of Truth.”

The world seemed to stop. “What?”

“You asked the price for what I can tell you. The price is the Sword of Truth.”

Richard stood paralyzed. “You can’t be serious.”

The corners of her lips curled ever so slightly. “Oh, but I am.”

Off through the trees, Richard saw Samuel stand up, suddenly very attentive.

“What do you want with the sword?”

“You asked the price, I named it. What I want with the payment after it has been made is not your concern.”

Richard felt sweat trickle down between his shoulder blades.

“Shota . . .”

He couldn’t seem to make himself move, or speak. This was not at all what he had expected.

Shota turned her back and started for the road. “Good-bye, Richard. It’s been nice knowing you. Don’t come back.”

“Wait!”

Shota paused to look back over her shoulder, waves of her auburn hair glistening in a streamer of golden sunlight. “Yes or no, Richard. I have given you enough of myself for nothing in return. I will give you no more. If you want this, you will pay for it. I will not offer you the chance again.”

She watched him a moment and then started to turn away again. Richard gritted his teeth.

“All right.”

She paused. “You agree, then?”

“Yes.”

She turned fully around to face him, waiting.

Richard immediately reached up to pull the baldric off over his head. Cara jumped in front of him and seized his wrist in both her hands.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she growled. Her red leather glowed in the low sunlight, as if to match the fire in her eyes.

“Shota knows something about this whole mess,” he told her. “I need to know what she can tell me. I don’t know what else to do. I don’t have any choice.”

Cara let go of his wrist with one hand to press her fingers to her forehead as she tried to gather her senses, tried to calm her sudden rapid breathing.

“Lord Rahl, you can’t do this. You can’t. You’re not thinking clearly. You’re swept up in the passion of the moment, the passion of wanting something you think she has. You’ve got it in your head that you have to have it no matter what. You don’t even know what she’s offering. As angry as she is at you, it’s most likely that she has nothing of any real value.”

“I have to know something that will help me find the truth.”

“And there is no assurance that this will. Lord Rahl, listen to me. You’re not thinking clearly. I’m telling you, the price is too high.”

“There is no price too high for Kahlan’s life—especially if the price is merely an object.”

“This isn’t her life you would be buying. It’s just a witch woman’s word that she can tell you something useful—a witch woman who wants to hurt you for rejecting her. You said yourself that nothing she’s ever told you before ever turned out to be the way she said. This will be no different. You will lose your sword and it will be for nothing of value.”

“Cara, I have to do this.”

“Lord Rahl, this is crazy.”

“And what if it’s me that’s crazy?”

“What are you talking about?”

“What if all of you are right and there really isn’t any Kahlan? What if I’m crazy? Even you think I am. I need to know what Shota can tell me. If I’m wrong about everything I believe, then what good is a sword going to do a crazy man? If all of you are right that I’m delusional, then what good can I do anyone else? What good am I to anyone if I’m crazy? What good am I at all?”

Her eyes looked liquid. “You’re not crazy.”

“No? Then you believe there really is a woman named Kahlan and I’m married to her?” When she didn’t answer, he pulled her other hand off his wrist. “I didn’t think so.”

Cara turned angrily to Shota, pointing with her Agiel. “You can’t take his sword! It isn’t fair and you know it! You’re taking advantage of his condition. You can’t take his sword!”

“The price I asked is but a trifling—The sword isn’t even his. It never was.”

Shota beckoned with a finger. Samuel, watching from the shadows, scurried toward them through the trees.

Cara stepped between Richard and Shota. “It was given to Lord Rahl by the First Wizard. Lord Rahl was named to the post of Seeker and given the Sword of Truth. It’s his!”

“And where do you suppose the First Wizard got the sword in the first place?” Shota pointed a finger tipped with a long red-lacquered nail downward at the ground. “He got it here. He came here, into my home, and stole it. That’s where Zedd got the sword.

“Richard doesn’t carry it by right, but by theft. Giving it back to its rightful owner is a small penance to pay for what he wants to know.”

Cara had a dangerous look in her eyes as she lifted her Agiel. Richard gently grasped her wrist and lowered her arm before she started something that he knew could quickly turn ugly. He wasn’t sure of the results of such a confrontation, but he dared not risk losing what Shota could tell him—or risk losing Cara.

“I’m doing as I must,” he told Cara in a calm voice. “Don’t make this any more difficult than it already is.”

Richard had seen Cara in every sort of mood imaginable. He’d seen her happy, sad, disheartened, resolved, determined, and enraged, but until that moment he had never seen her anger focused so intently, deliberately, so directly at him.

And then he had a sudden vision of her taken by cruel anger once before, a long time ago.

He couldn’t afford to suffer the distraction of any such memory right then and shoved it out of his mind. This was about Kahlan, and about the future, not about the past.

Richard pulled the baldric off over his head and gathered it together with the scabbard. Samuel, not far behind his mistress’s skirts, stood quietly watching, his greedy eyes riveted on the wire-wound hilt.

Holding the gleaming gold and silver scabbard in both hands, bundled together with the ancient, tooled leather baldric, Richard lifted it out to Shota.

She made a move to take it. “The sword belongs to Samuel, my loyal companion.” She smiled triumphantly. “Give it to him.”

Richard stood frozen. He couldn’t let Samuel have the Sword of Truth. He just couldn’t.

He wondered then just what he thought Shota would want with the sword if not to give it to Samuel. He guessed that he had been trying not to think of what it really meant to hand it over to Shota.

“But the sword made him like that. Zedd told me that the sword’s magic did that to him, turned him into what he is now.”

“And when he has back what belongs to him, he will be who he once was, before it was stolen from him by your grandfather.”

Richard knew Samuel’s character. As far as Richard was concerned, Samuel was capable of anything, including murder. Richard could hardly give something so dangerous as the Sword of Truth to someone like that.

Too many people like Samuel had carried the sword, had fought over it, stolen it from one another, sold it to the highest bidder, who then became a Seeker whose services were for sale to any loathsome cause that could pay the price. In the shadows it passed from hand to hand, used for vile and violent purposes. By the time Zedd had finally gotten the Sword of Truth back and eventually given it to Richard, the Seeker had become an object of scorn and contempt, seen as nothing more than a criminal, and a dangerous one at that.

If he gave the sword to Samuel, it would be that way again. It would start all over again.

But if he didn’t, then Richard had no chance of ever stopping the far greater threat very likely loose in the world, or of ever seeing Kahlan again. While Kahlan was of paramount importance to him, personally, he was convinced that her disappearance augured an ominous menace far more sinister, with potential harm on a scale he feared to contemplate.

His responsibility as the Seeker of Truth was to the truth, not to the Sword of Truth.

Samuel inched closer, his eyes on the sword, his arms reaching, his palms held up, waiting.

“Mine, gimme,” Samuel growled impatiently, his hateful eyes glaring.

Richard lifted his head to look at Shota. She folded her arms, as if to say that this was his last chance. This was the last chance Richard had of ever finding the truth.

If he had known of any other way to find a solution, no matter how remote that chance might be, he would have taken the sword back and taken that chance instead. But he couldn’t lose this chance, lose what information Shota had. There was nothing else to do.

With trembling hands, Richard lifted the sword out.

Samuel, unwilling to wait the final seconds until it reached him, lunged and snatched the sword away, finally clutching the coveted object to his breast.

The instant he had it, a strange look came over his face. He glanced up into Richard’s eyes, his own wide with wonder, his mouth hanging agape. Richard couldn’t imagine what Samuel was seeing as a result of having his hands on the Sword of Truth. Richard thought that perhaps he was simply awestruck to realize that he actually did have it again.

He suddenly skittered away, swiftly disappearing into the trees. The Sword of Truth was once again among the shadows.

Richard felt naked, and stunned. He stared off in the direction Samuel had gone. He wished now that he had killed Shota’s companion the first time Samuel had attacked him. Samuel had attacked Richard more than once. Richard had let those chances slip away.

He turned a harsh glare on Shota. “If he harms anyone, it will be on your head.”

“I am not the one who gave him the sword. You did so of your own free will. I did not twist your arm or use my powers to force you. Do not try to shed responsibility for your own choices and actions.”

“And I am not responsible for his actions. If he harms anyone, I will see to it that this time he pays for his crimes.”

Shota glanced off among the trees dotting the sweep of grass. “There is no one here for him to harm. He has his sword. He is happy, now.”

Richard seriously doubted that.

With quiet fury, he turned his attention to the matter at hand. He didn’t want to hear any of her excuses so he came right to the point.

“You have your payment.”

She stared at him a long time, her face unreadable. Finally, in a quiet voice, she spoke a single word.

“Chainfire.”

She turned and started toward the road.

Richard seized her arm and turned her back. “What?”

“You wanted what I know that can help you find the truth. I have given it to you: Chainfire.”

Richard was incredulous. “Chainfire? What does that mean?”

Shota shrugged. “I have no idea. I only know that it is what you need to know to find the truth of all this.”

“What do you mean, you have no idea? You can’t just tell me some word I never heard of and then leave. That’s not a fair trade for what I’ve given you.”

“Nonetheless, that is the agreement you made, and I have upheld my end of the bargain.”

“You have to tell me what it means.”

“I don’t know what it means, but I do know that it is worth the price you paid.”

Richard couldn’t believe that he had agreed to a deal in which he got nothing of value in return. He was no closer to finding Kahlan than he had been before he’d come to see Shota. He felt like sitting down right there on the ground and giving up.

“Our business is concluded. Good-bye, Richard. Please leave. It will be dark, soon. I can assure you, you would not like to be here when it gets dark.”

Shota started down the road toward her palace in the distance. As he watched her go, Richard reprimanded himself for embracing failure without even trying for success. He now knew something linked to the mystery. It was a piece of the puzzle, a piece of the solution, so valuable that it had previously been known only to a witch woman. It confirmed for him that Kahlan was real. He told himself that he was a step closer. He had to believe that.

“Shota,” Richard called.

She paused and turned back, waiting to hear what he might say, looking like she expected a tirade.

“Thank you,” he said in a sincere voice. “I don’t know what good knowing the word Chainfire will do me, but thank you. You have at least given me a reason to go on. When I came here, I had none; now I do. Thank you.”

She stared at him. He could not imagine what she could be thinking.

Finally, she took a slow step back toward him. She clasped her hands before herself, looking down a moment before she stared off at the trees, apparently considering something.

At last, she spoke. “What you seek is long buried.”

“Long buried?” he cautiously asked.

“Like the word Chainfire, I can’t tell you what that means. Things come to me in regard to issues, problems, questions. I am the carrier of the information, the channel you might say. I am not the source. I can’t tell you the meaning, but I can tell you that what you seek is long buried.”

“Chainfire, and seek something long buried.” Richard repeated as he nodded. “Got it. I’ll not forget.”

Her brow twitched, as if something else had just came to her. “You must find the place of the bones in the Deep Nothing.”

Richard felt goose bumps racing up his legs. He had no idea what the “Deep Nothing” was, but he didn’t like the sound of it, or the sound of looking for bones. He refused to consider the dire implications.

Shota turned again to the road and started making her way toward her palace. She had not gone more than a dozen paces when she stopped and turned back. Her ageless eyes met his gaze.

“Beware the viper with four heads.”

Richard cocked his head expectantly. “I don’t know what that means—the viper with four heads.”

“Whether or not you realize it right now, I have given you a fair trade. I have given you the answers you needed. You are the Seeker—or at least, you were; you will have to seek the meaning to be found in those answers.”

With that, she turned for the final time and walked off through the golden light down the long road.

“Let’s go,” he said to Cara. “I’d not like to find out why we don’t want to be here when it gets dark.”

Cara cast him an icy glare. “I would imagine it has something to do with a murderous maniac wielding a deadly sword coming at you out of the darkness.”

Richard gloomily supposed that she might be right. Samuel would probably not be content to simply have the sword. He would probably want to eliminate the rightful owner and thereby any chance that Richard might lay claim to it or somehow get it back.

Despite what Shota had said, the real thief had been Samuel. The Sword of Truth was the responsibility of the First Wizard. He was the one who named Seekers and gave them the sword. It did not belong to whoever might possess it by any means, it belonged to the true, wizard-named Seeker, and that was Richard.

With sickening dread, he realized that he had betrayed the trust his grandfather had placed in him when he had given Richard the sword.

But what value would the sword be to him if keeping it meant that Kahlan would lose her life?

There was no higher value to him than life.